Canadian True Crime - Q&A Anniversary Special!
Episode Date: January 29, 2018Yay! I made it to a year of podcasting!I'm announcing a couple of format changes, and then I launch into the Q&A session.Thanks to my patrons and members of the facebook discussion group for submi...tting the questions.Support the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hello fellow listeners of Canadian True Crime, this is Jordan, host of the nighttime podcast.
You may recognize my voice as I have appeared in several past episodes of Christie's show.
Most recently I was the undercover officer who spoke with Robert Picton in part 4 of
that series.
I wanted to use this message as an opportunity to introduce myself and invite you to check
out my show.
Since 2015 I've been covering true crime, mysteries, and a variety of weird and wonderful
Canadian stories on my show, the nighttime podcast.
Canadian True Crime listeners may enjoy my most recent episode which covers the still
unexplained disappearance of Troy Cook from Truro, Nova Scotia.
In that episode I share the details of Troy's disappearance, primarily using excerpts of
a series of conversations I had with the last person to see Troy, his father Tom Cook.
If you prefer your case is solved, my most popular episode is a three-part series called
The Sydney River McDonald's Murders.
This series covers a robbery gone wrong, turned a mass murder at a McDonald's restaurant
in my hometown in Cape Breton.
The series dives deep into the crime, the investigation, and the trials.
So while you're waiting for Christie's next episode, take a listen to the nighttime podcast.
All 50 plus episodes on my show can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
So take a moment and subscribe now to the nighttime podcast.
This is Christie and welcome to Canadian True Crime, the first anniversary Q&A special.
Now I'm actually talking off the calf right now so you'll figure out why I have a scripted
show because I'm not very good at it.
My good friends are at the misconduct podcast, I hope you guys have checked that one out.
Recently held a really good Q&A session to mark their first anniversary and I heard one
from Felon True Crime a couple of months ago.
So clearly all the cool kids are doing it so I thought I would try and get in on that
action.
Before I get to the Q&A, I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to be making a couple
of small changes to the format of the show.
There's a term called pod fade and if any of my podcast friends are listening, they'll
know what I'm talking about.
It's basically a burnout that many podcasters experience when they realize that podcasting
is so much more work than they anticipated and then oftentimes many of them quit.
In my case, producing the super lengthy episodes is taking up every minute of my free time
after the kids go to bed and I've kind of realized that the deep dive format is killing
me a little bit.
I'm sure that the long episodes are also killing the show's audio producer, Eric Crosby as
well even though he keeps smiling and hasn't complained yet but that's kind of in his personality.
So for the sake of a better balance in my life and I'm sure in his, I'm going to start
producing shorter episodes.
I'll still be covering them thoroughly but I'll only be doing the super deep dive cases
every so often, not every single episode like I've been doing.
Also, I'm going to ease up a little bit on the background music too because choosing
and placing the music for every scene adds a lot of time to the overall amount of time
it takes to produce the episode.
So I'm thinking if I do it a little bit more strategically then I might be able to save
some time there.
So I'm hoping that these changes will be pretty subtle so that you don't notice it that much
but in case you do, please know that I haven't slackened off, I'm just changing the format
a little bit so that I don't burn out and quit the podcast.
I also wanted to tell you that I have 200 to 300 cases on my listener suggestion list
now and I get about one more added to it most days.
I'd like to really cover more of these cases and I definitely can't while I'm continuing
to do this like three and four part series type thing.
So that's kind of another reason why I think doing episodes that aren't so long is going
to help.
So with that out of the way, it's on to the Q&A.
All of the questions have come from either my Patreon page or my Facebook discussion
group.
If you haven't joined, just go to Canadian True Crime Discussion Group on Facebook,
just do a search.
And the questions have covered a bunch of things about the podcast and me personally.
So thank you to everyone for submitting your questions.
And then at the end, I'm going to play you a couple more new Canadian podcast trailers
that you might like.
I was supposed to play them at the end of the last picked an episode, but somehow it
didn't really feel right to end on that note.
So I'm going to be playing them in this episode instead.
So the first question will start off with Autumn.
What got you into True Crime?
Was there one specific story?
I've always been into kind of the darker side of life and the gritty stuff that happens,
things that people don't really like to talk about or think about.
I've always been fascinated by.
So when I was, I guess in my early 20s, yeah, I would have been 20 actually, I came across
this website called CrimeLibrary.com and it just had really well written write ups of
all of the main serial killers at that time.
You know, it had Bundy and Manson and, you know, the Green River Killer and everyone
on the list.
And so I would just like read all of these cases like there was no tomorrow.
I just consumed it.
I was just so interested in it.
And there were three cases that I remember that really, really shook me to the core and
I don't know, horrified me, I guess.
One of them was James Bulger, the little toddler in the UK who was let off at a shopping mall
by two young teenagers and they did horrible things to him.
I won't go into detail because it's awful.
But that case really, really affected me.
And then another one was the story of Anita Cobby in Australia.
And this case was a case of a woman who walked home by herself from the train station one
night and unfortunately was kidnapped by a car full of hooligans.
And again, the things that were done to her were horrendous.
And I was really pleased that Case Fire, one of my favorite podcasts, covered this a couple
of months back.
They did an amazing job, but it's a really jarring case and it really stayed with me.
And the third one, and I probably say this one stayed with me probably the most was Paul
Bernardo and Carla Hamalka.
And at the time, I had absolutely no affinity with Canada.
In fact, it didn't even really register to me that they were from Canada.
They were just like two horrific monsters like, can you imagine doing that to your own sister?
I think that was the thing that really got to me the most.
And just the fact that usually these cases seem to be all male, but to have a female
go along with it, it just kind of really blew my mind.
So these cases really stayed with me and got me into true crime.
So Eileen from the Misconduct podcast says, have you always been into true crime?
I guess no, because I wasn't really that aware of it before I turned 20.
I guess I just hadn't really been exposed to it.
No one in my family was into true crime or what she, you know, a lot of people say, you
know, their mother or their father was into reading true crime books, so they picked up
a book or something.
I didn't have that experience with my family, so I guess I kind of had to find it out on
my own.
But I have two other things that I'm really into or have had spent a lot of time being
into the same as true crime.
One of them is abandoned buildings and urban decay.
I'm really fascinated by that.
And I used to devour pictures of urban decay on the internet a lot.
In fact, for my 31st birthday, I convinced my husband, my daughter's here.
I just want to go to sleep in your room, okay?
Okay.
Okay, I'm back.
She didn't let me leave that easily, so she is asleep in our bed, I think.
But this type of thing happens every now and then where they'll bust into the closet.
I usually just go back and delete that part, but I thought I would leave this in because
it's kind of cute.
My story about Detroit, yeah, so my husband and I went to Detroit for the weekend of my
birthday to hang around in the downtown area and check out the urban decay.
He was terrified the entire time.
I was like super excited to be there and we caught the people mover around and just kind
of hopped out.
I already had all the main buildings I liked mapped out and we kind of hopped out and had
a look and I got my photo taken outside the buildings and there's some really amazing
architecture in Detroit and like buildings that are like 30, 50 stories high that are
completely abandoned.
So yeah, I just find that to be really fascinating.
And the other thing that I really am interested in is fighter jet planes.
So I'm a bit of a geek, I'm kind of obsessed with the sonic boom that fighter jets do when
they go super fast and you can actually see them.
And I cannot tell you how many hours I've spent YouTubeing visuals of sonic booms.
It's actually quite embarrassing.
So those are the three weird interests that I have.
That was probably a lot more information than you wanted to know, but it's out there now.
Eileen from misconduct podcast also asks, isn't my cat Rocket the cutest cat you've ever seen?
I would have to say yes, Rocket is an adorable cat.
I have seen so many snapchats of Rocket.
He's a pure black kitty cat and Eileen has this hilarious way of zooming in and out on
him and his face.
He's very cute Eileen.
Colleen from the misconduct podcast asks, who is your favorite me or Eileen?
There is only one right answer.
I'm sorry, but I have to choose Rocket the cat guys.
Eileen again asks, how did you decide to start Canadian true crime podcast?
So when was it?
In 2016, I was, you know, doing my thing, watching a lot of TV because I really love
to watch TV and I was listening to a lot of true crime podcasts.
And then I was on all these Facebook groups where all the true crime podcasts are.
And a lot of people were saying, where's the podcast based on Canadian true crime stories?
And there really weren't that many.
I think at the time there was only like the nighttime podcast and the trail went cold.
And then somebody knows something, a couple of other ones, but not the massive concentration
like there is in the US.
And so I kept listening to case file, which is like my number one true crime podcast.
And after a while it's, it's, I started thinking, I could do this.
Like I have, I work in marketing and communications.
So I have like the research and writing skill set needed for it.
And I have the marketing skill set needed to market a podcast and I'm pretty technically
minded.
So I thought to myself, Hey, I can figure out how to do this.
And if I can't, well, at least I can say that I've tried.
So at that point, I was just still kind of mulling it over because I'm essentially a
pretty lazy person.
I'm not the type of person who gets an idea and acts on it straight away.
I have to like mull it over for a couple of months before I take action.
So I very rarely take action.
And eventually I'm like, all right, I'm just going to start writing a script.
And if I finish the script, then I'll work out what I'm going to do next.
So then I said about writing this Paul Bernardo and Carla Hamulka, because you know, that's
one of my pet cases, as I said before.
And then finally I got to the end of the script and I'm like, Oh, well, it looks like I'm
going to have to record something.
So this comes into the next question.
Quite a few people asked this question, Liz Jody and Wally Roo.
And I'm not sure if it's Wally Roo or Wally Roo's Mrs.
I know both of them come in.
Hi guys.
What type of preparation did you do to start the podcast?
I.e.
What type of equipment did you have, sponsorships, etc.
How did you figure out what you needed to get started?
I'm one of those people that likes to figure things out for themselves.
So I did a lot of research.
I watched YouTube clips.
I looked at blogs, basically anything I could find about podcasting 101 for beginners.
I figured out what software to use.
There's quite a few different software, but most podcasters start off with audacity because
it's free.
You start off, you're not sure if you're going to like it or continue with it.
So you don't want to make a huge investment off the bat.
So I started using audacity software and I still use it today.
It's fine for what I need.
And then I figured out that the darling microphone of brand new podcasters is the blue snowball,
which kind of looks like a little robot head on a tripod.
So I got that.
And then I got myself a pop filter, which is, you know, the little meshy thing that
stands between you and the microphone so that the hard peas don't aren't heard.
So I got one of those and then I have a laptop already.
So I'm like, okay, I'm away.
So I watched lots and lots of YouTube tutorials to figure out how to use this audacity software.
But surprisingly, it's pretty user friendly.
I didn't start off with any sponsors that that wasn't even something that I was would
even think would have happened to me.
I was just kind of like, well, I'll put this episode out and then that's it.
So I tried to record at the beginning and it did not go so well.
I just kept making all these mistakes and I was really uncomfortable sitting in my closet
and then I was like, oh, this sucks.
I can't do this anymore.
And I went downstairs and I said to my husband, I'm like, that's it.
My like podcast is over.
I'm done.
The recording has the recording part of it has completely undone me.
I can't do it.
And he said to me, oh, come on, give it another go.
So I did.
And surprisingly, it the recording part got better and easier each time I did it.
So I continued.
And what I did was I uploaded the Paul Bernardo and Carla Hamulka episodes and straight away
I got like a couple of hundred downloads and I was like, where are these people coming
from?
And I think they must have been typing Canadian true crime into the search bar because, you
know, obviously there was a demand for it.
So then I thought, oh crap, well, I better do another episode then.
So I picked out the Cody Legibokov case and decided to do it.
And then after that, I was kind of on a roll.
And then I got up up to about six episodes or something.
And then I started charting on the Canadian iTunes charts for some bizarre reason.
I have no idea why.
And before you know it, I ended up at number two.
And then I guess all these people started noticing me and I started getting all these
messages from people.
And one of them was a random email from a listener called Eric, who said he was a owned
owned a music and audio studio.
He was a composer and he now worked on Bay Street, which is like Toronto's version of
Wall Street.
And he said, did I did I want some help with the audio production aspect of the podcast?
And I said to him, really, like you want to edit out all of my breathing.
And every time I swear when I make a mistake, when I'm recording, he's like, yep, yep.
So I said, all right, I'm going to send you the file and then you can see how you go.
So he's been doing that for me ever since.
So what is it now?
It must be 12 episodes he's done for me.
And I can't tell you how much he has helped me.
So Eric, I know you're listening.
Thank you so much.
He's also composed a lot of music that goes into it.
We don't have a lot of time or I have not given him a lot of time to compose, compose
original music.
So he often does a combination of his own music and then once pieces that we find from
free music archives.
So that's how I ended up with an audio guy.
And honestly, I don't know what would have happened if I didn't have him.
Yeah, he really took a lot of the burden off me.
So that was good.
And then, you know, about the same time I got this message from Jordan Bonaparte from
the nighttime podcast.
And I had known about Jordan, but, you know, he was like this big podcaster and I'm not
really one to reach out to people.
So I just kind of hang in the background, but he messaged me and he said, hey, congratulations
on the iTunes chart thing.
I've been doing this for like two years.
Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything.
And then straight away, I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I need some help.
Like with this audio set up, I need a new microphone because the baby microphone wasn't
I felt like I needed something a bit better.
So he told me to get this new microphone and I did and I love it.
It's the AT 2020 USB.
So that has been going very well.
And then Jordan has ended up being a really, really good friend of mine and he's helped
me a lot with, you know, encouraging me when I'm like feeling like everything's getting
a little bit too much.
I find every single case I do, I come to a point where I get completely overwhelmed
and feel like completely hopeless and it's almost like you get into a hole and you have
to dig your way out.
And every time he just says to me, keep on plugging away like he's been there so many
times before.
So it's really encouraging.
I guess he's kind of like a mentor.
I lean from misconduct again.
How do you decide on the cases you cover?
In the beginning, I found my own cases, but then listeners started sending cases in.
And so I've been going pretty much completely on listener suggestions ever since except
for Dylan Millard and Tim Bosma.
I always knew that I was going to cover that case because it happened close to home.
But yeah, everything else has been listeners suggestions.
And in terms of what cases, I try to do like a mixture of cases from around Canada.
So try not to stick to one area, although given that more than half of the cases on
my list are from Ontario, it's really hard.
So I apologize to all of the other Canadians.
I know that Ontario has this reputation of thinking that we're all that.
So I do try and get around to other provinces.
And I also try to do different crime types as well.
Sarah says, have you ever made any mistakes that you wish you could correct?
I'm sure everybody who's listening has noticed the mistakes that I've made.
And many times the listeners will message me to tell me, so I'll get like multiple messages
and some of them are actually quite rude the way they talk to me.
It's like I've been like completely careless or something.
Most of the time it's been an innocent mistake.
Like I think twice I have confused Vancouver Island and Victoria.
I've said Vancouver on Victoria Island.
It's not like I don't know what that is because I work for a national company and we actually
have a Vancouver Island office.
So I know like in my head the geography of it, but when you're sitting down and writing
sometimes you're too close to it and you can't see the forest for the trees and then it ends
up coming out as I'm talking.
So yeah, I am keenly aware that I have said that wrong.
I think I said it wrong in the Reno Verk episode and also in Picton.
With the Carla Hamulka, I had one person say that I described Carla's beating by Paul
Bernardo incorrectly.
One of the aspects of the injury was incorrect.
I'm like, okay, I'll take that.
Early listeners to the show will remember in the Cody Ledger Brokoff episode I said that
the legal drinking agent BC is 20.
I have to take full responsibility for not doing my research there.
I just casually asked a workmate and it seemed like she didn't know what it was either.
So yeah, I actually went and edited that out afterwards, but I haven't been able to edit
out any of the other mistakes.
It's a lot harder than what you might think.
Tori Stafford, the lawyer for or one of the lawyers was, I said it was Dick Durstein
and it's actually Dirk Durstein and it originated from a news article in the Toronto Star.
They printed it as Dick Durstein incorrectly and then I guess my brain decided that that
was it.
And in any other place I saw that name written down, it was Dick in my mind.
So I apologize to Mr. Dirk Durstein.
Autumn, does anyone in your family work for law enforcement?
No.
Have you ever been on TV or radio before this?
Only on this TV show in Brisbane called The Great Southeast.
It's a long story, but I spoke about the history of the Lamington and that was in 2008 and
I do not have a copy of it.
Thank God.
Growing up, had you ever imagined you would be hosting your own podcast?
Absolutely not.
I wanted to be a hairdresser when I was a kid and then I wanted to be a psychologist,
but I didn't have the science required, I hated science.
So I ended up getting into marketing and then Autumn also asked, what do your kids think
about their mum being a celebrity?
I am not a celebrity.
I am that chick in the closet with the microphone and my kids just think I'm this daggy old
person wearing track pants and baggy t-shirts around the house.
So they've got no idea that I'm a podcaster.
By far the most popular question asked by a bunch of people was why did you move to Canada?
This is not a very exciting answer in fact, it's kind of weird, but I always wanted to
move to Melbourne.
I'm from Brisbane and I love Melbourne.
I always wanted to move there.
So that would have been my plan, but then I met my husband when we were working together
at the same company and we were really good friends for about eight months before we officially
got together and he said to me, it had always been his dream to move to Canada.
He was really into ice hockey, the NHL and just felt like Australia wasn't the country
for him.
So I just kind of went okay and before you know it, we started off this three year plan
to move to Canada.
So it was really kind of reckless.
I can't believe that we did it with the plan of moving permanently, but here we are almost
nine years later, I guess it all kind of worked out.
So it's pretty innocuous story.
No one moved for a job or anything.
We both resigned and then moved here and applied for jobs once we got here.
So yeah, that's it.
We moved for the NHL.
Janine asks, how long had you been in the Great White North?
I said that almost nine years.
Do you know who Bob and Doug McKenzie are?
No, I did not, but I Googled them and they seem to be like Russell Coyte if the Aussies
are listening.
Can you ice skate?
Absolutely not.
In fact, I hate it.
It makes me anxious.
I feel completely unsteady on my feet.
So now I refuse to do it.
Do you go tobogganing?
No, I'm the one that stands there with the camera and takes the photos and the videos.
How do you call off in the summer?
I'm an indoor girl, so I just hang out inside.
And last but not least, what is your favorite adult beverage?
I love martinis.
Any type of martini and I'm there.
I also love churras.
Joanna, my friend, asks, what's your favorite dessert?
It is crème brûlée.
If there is crème brûlée on the menu, I will never order anything else.
Cherie asks, do you get the extreme cold like minus 40 with the wind chill?
If not, what's the coldest you've had to deal with here?
Does it make you want to run away screaming or are you getting used to it?
I think the coldest I've ever had is minus 25 plus wind chill.
And that was a couple of years ago and it was, I think it was really random.
It's something that doesn't often happen here in Toronto.
In fact, people laugh at us for being so soft with our complaining about the cold weather.
Normally in the winter, it's I guess around zero to minus 10, which is quite manageable.
It's only when the wind comes in that it gets, yeah, the wind just turns it into some sort
of nightmare.
It doesn't make me want to run away screaming anymore, but the novelty has well and truly
worn off.
So yeah, it definitely doesn't make me want to go back home to 35 degree weather.
I'll tell you that.
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Audrey asks, what is your favorite Canadian food?
I actually don't really like a whole heap of Canadian foods because a lot of it is savory,
like, you know, the ketchup chips and the all dressed chips.
Like I'm not a big chip person.
I'm not big into protein because I don't like gravy on chips.
A fry, sorry, should I say.
Butter tarts.
I would like them if they didn't seem to have raisins in them all the time.
Like, I just don't like raisins.
I really like beaver tails.
I had my first one of those a couple of years ago.
That was delicious.
Susan asks, what is your favorite Canadian saying?
I'd have to say a.
Now that I say it all the time and I know that I'm saying it,
I can't imagine what else I would say.
But I think the difference is Australians would say it too,
but they say hey at the end of the sentence.
Like that car's pretty cool.
Hey, whereas the Canadians would go, that car's pretty cool.
Hey, so it's a different inflection.
It's kind of the same word.
So I guess if I went back to Australia, I would move back to saying hey again.
But while I'm in Canada, I'm saying the a just like the rest of them.
And Susan also asks, what Canadian word do you refuse to use and pronounce properly?
I don't think I pronounce any of the words properly just because of my accent.
But I will not use the word homo milk.
I do not understand that at all.
Why can't you just say milk?
I think it's like full cream milk, double double.
I do not have sugar in my coffee.
So I would never order a double double over here.
We call the toilet, the washroom.
I'm just going to the washroom back home.
You would say like the toilet or the ladies or the bathroom or the Danny.
But yeah, no, here it's the washroom.
So I do use washroom now.
I'm used to that.
Jason asks, what is a Canadian Aboriginal?
Jason is from South Australia.
So he only knows the Australian Aboriginal.
So he's asking about the Canadian one.
They are three different groups, First Nations, Inuit and Métis.
So yeah, it's a bit different to our Aboriginals from back home.
But the treatment of them and the issues that they have are very similar.
Veronica, what was your childhood like?
Did you ever come into contact with scary situations yourself,
like the ones you talked about?
I don't think so.
I've wracked my brain, but I can't think of anything.
I'm even remotely like that.
My childhood might surprise some people.
I was actually born in New Zealand in Christchurch.
And I spent all of my childhood after that in Blenheim,
which is a small town at the top of the South Island.
And then when I was 13, we immigrated to England.
My granddad was British.
So my mom got a British passport and we were able to immigrate to England.
We lived in a camper van and traveled all over England for like a year.
And then we finally settled and got a place at Maidenhead,
which is a little town kind of in the in Berkshire,
which is where London is.
I think it's like an hour from London.
So we lived there for like six months.
And then the cost of living was just too high.
And by that time, all of my relatives had started moving from New Zealand to Brisbane.
And so we just decided to join them and we moved to Brisbane.
So I lived in Brisbane from when I was 14 until I was 30 when I moved to Canada.
And I guess because Brisbane is the place where I lived for the longest,
and I had my, you know, my teenage years in my 20s,
which I consider to be like my most formative years,
that's why I consider myself Australian.
And also my accent is Australian,
even though some people say they can hear the kiwi coming out every now and then.
Jason asks, do the kids like Australia?
Absolutely.
They love it.
They love the animals.
They love seeing their cousins and their grandparents and all their relatives.
They don't love the heat.
And they are used to a temperature controlled environment here,
like all our houses are air conditioned.
And we have the furnace running in the winter.
So they're used to having a house that is a nice standard temperature.
So when we go to Australia,
they're not used to having a house that's hot and has fans running.
But other than that, they love it.
Jason and Kay asks, can you see yourself moving back to Australia in the future?
Probably not.
We've made a good life here and it feels like home now.
So there would have to be something really drastic to happen.
Teal asks, are you a fan of AFL and or AFLW?
Which I'm guessing is the woman's version.
Clearly no.
I'm not into sports at all.
I'm one of those arts and music types.
So yeah, I just, I've never liked sports.
I'm really uncoordinated.
So that probably was part of it.
Carensa, is it true that Canadians are like we Aussies, but even more laid back?
No, I wouldn't say that.
I find people pretty similar between Canada and Australia, just like everywhere.
And I can only really comment on the greater Toronto area because that's where I live.
So I just find the old stereotype of Canadians being super friendly and nice
is I just find they're just normal people here.
And I, in fact, in downtown Toronto, they're pretty rude, most of them.
So, you know, they try and push you to get on the train.
And I'm like, who are these these friendly Canadians?
Everyone keeps talking about, but I think it's just the big town thing.
So no, I would not think, I don't think that any of them are pretty laid back.
The people are pretty similar, I would say.
Hailey from the Murder Road Trip podcast asks, why do you have such a potty mouth?
Hailey is referring to another podcast that I'm on called Playlist.
And it's a music podcast and we curate music for different themes.
With Josh Hallmark, who runs the Our Americana Network, love him.
And on the first episode that I was on, I kind of got a bit excited because I was with
a bunch of other podcasters that I love and I swore a lot.
And then when I heard it back, I totally cringed.
And I've made a conscious effort not to swear like that in any subsequent episodes.
So, Hailey, why do I have such a potty mouth?
I think as a child, my parents cracked down really heavily on swearing.
And I think I overcompensated for it as an adult.
But I can control it as is evidenced by this Q&A session.
Ben and Rosie from They Walk Among Us podcast.
What are your favorite podcasts outside of True Crime?
I have a couple.
The first one is Canada Land.
They call themselves the Canadian Media Criticism Podcast.
And it's founded by Jesse Brown.
Canadians know him as the guy who broke the Gian Gomeshi story.
But media criticism doesn't really do it justice in my eyes because what it does is like shines
a light on fascinating Canadian cultural issues relating to the media.
And also like what's going on behind the scenes with the media and the government
in the general public.
They have like really super, super smart guests.
And I finish each episode feeling like I'm somehow smarter.
So, I really love Canada Land.
Our Americana, like I was saying before, Josh Hallmark travels across the U.S.
into Kemper and speaks to the locals of small towns.
And he brings fascinating local stories to the surface.
And it's a really powerful podcast.
We're all just pretending.
This is a podcast done by my friend Lainey from the True Crime Fan Club podcast.
It's kind of, she says it's Dear Abby with a twist of post-secret.
But I find it, there's amazing advice on it.
And it's also super hilarious at the same time.
And she gets all different podcasters on it and really wise people and really funny people.
And it's just great.
We're all just pretending.
And then the other one I was going to mention is the peripheral.
And this is with Justin from The Generation Y.
And it's kind of personal stories about topics
that the mainstream population think are taboo or shameful.
Like people who've had difficult lives or odd medical conditions,
the harsh reality of depression and anxiety, drug addictions, etc.
It's really fascinating.
So that's the peripheral.
David asks, in addition to Canadian True Crime,
have you ever considered covering Australian True Crime?
I imagine there are some interesting cases from down under that us hoses are unaware of.
Actually, when I first, when I was thinking about starting a True Crime podcast,
I thought to myself at the beginning, oh, it's going to be so weird to start a Canadian one
when I'm an Aussie.
It's, it's so weird.
And then I'm like, should I start an Australian one?
But honestly, case file has got the market pretty much cornered there.
And then there's Felon True Crime, which is another one that I really loved and still do
and enjoyed when I started up my own podcast.
And I feel like those two covered a lot of Australian stories.
Felon does it exclusively.
So I just decided to continue with, with my podcast where I know the demand was for Canadian
stories.
So I think there's quite a few others doing Australian stories now.
So I'll leave it to them.
And there is actually a podcast called Australian True Crime now.
It's more professional than mine.
It's done by Michelle Laurie, who's kind of a celebrity in Australia.
It's really quite good.
Karen Silverstein-Rodrigue, who is one of my wonderful mods in my discussion group.
She says, who is your favorite?
Notice it's spelt correctly.
She's spelt it F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E.
She's from California.
Male movie star and TV star.
The movie star would have to be Tom Hiddleston, mainly when he played Loki.
I thought he was pretty awesome.
And TV star, you can't beat Matthew Goode.
He was from The Good Wife.
He played Finn Pulmar, the lawyer.
I really like that guy too.
And Kim, one of my mods for Australia, was saying,
I was listening to The Minds of Madness and heard the episode on Rahini Basis R and your
interaction with her.
What were your feelings afterwards when you learned of her crime?
Did it make you more aware of people around you?
Well, just to give you a bit of a background, if people haven't heard that.
What happened was, in Toronto a couple of years ago, in the shopper's drug mart down
from where I work, a woman came in, a tiny little woman came in with a knife and just
stabbed a random stranger to death.
And as it came out, they said, oh, she'd been hanging out at the Starbucks day after
day after day.
And my workmate Heather said to me, hey, we've seen her.
And we had an encounter with her and I was like, oh my god, we have too.
The encounter was more meaningful to Heather than it was to me.
But when she reminded me, I had a clear picture of it.
So we were in the Starbucks and we were just lining up and she was sitting at the little
table that she always sat at.
And she pushed past us with a glass and demanded that they refill her glass of water.
And Heather and I just kind of looked at each other and went, what the hell?
But yeah, just a couple of weeks later, she would walk into a shopper's drug mart and
stab someone to death.
Turns out that she had pretty bad schizophrenia.
Yeah, obviously when we learned about her crime, we were completely shocked.
She was really well-dressed and put together and she was beautiful.
She looked absolutely gorgeous.
But yeah, she was her actions.
She was just seemed very abnormal.
Did it make you more aware of people around you?
I think yes, but I've always been pretty aware of people around me.
Heather, if you had a chance to talk to anyone living or dead, who would it be and why?
I thought a lot about this question and then I'm like, oh, you know, I should probably
come up with some people.
You know, so I'm representing a woman.
I'm representing this and that.
And then I kind of got into my head a little bit too much.
So I'm just going to tell you the first three people that came to my head.
Unfortunately, none of them are women and they're all people who think outside the
box and don't really think the way normal people think.
Marilyn Manson, Damien Eccles and Larry David.
And if you don't know who Larry David is, he is the guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm and
the co-writer for Seinfeld.
I just think he's brilliantly funny.
If you haven't watched Curb Your Enthusiasm, you should.
It's amazing.
And then Damien Eccles is obviously, for those who don't know, he's one of the West Memphis
three who was wrongly convicted, I believe, of the murder of three little boys.
And he was kind of targeted because he was different and kind of goth-like.
And I find him a really fascinating person.
He has some interesting things to say.
Heather also asks, do you think your research has shaped the way you live every day,
i.e. looking over your shoulder, super protective of your children?
Yes, absolutely.
And I, like I said before, I've always been pretty aware of my surroundings.
But the cases involving children in particular make me really, really,
really protective of my own kids, especially the episode five where I was talking about
teenage boys and even the second case with Jason Gommage.
He was a boy that everybody liked and was asked to babysit.
And yeah, I'm now like, okay, my kids are never going to be alone with a teenage boy.
And my son is going to be a teenage boy one day, which terrifies me.
So there's a lot of things to be concerned about with kids.
And it's, it's hard not to be a helicopter parent, but yeah,
it's something I think about a lot.
Heather also asks, how do you decompress when you've had enough of all the awful things you
read and write?
I used to think that, that I was okay.
I deal with the emotions as I'm writing it, especially I remember the Tory Stafford one
when I was writing the scene.
Those of you who did listen to parts two and three, you know what scene I'm talking about.
It was very, very emotional for me.
And at the time I regretted taking on the case.
I'm just, I can't believe I'm writing this.
It's horrible.
And I did leave a lot of the details out.
And as soon as I'd finished writing it, I felt, I felt fine emotionally.
But after I, after I recorded, I just felt physically exhausted.
And every night for the next week, almost a week, I just went to bed early.
So as soon as the kids went to bed, I just went straight to bed.
And I feel like that was kind of my, my body telling me that it, it had had enough and
that I just needed to sleep.
And that's what I found after recording this last episode of Picked In 2.
The, the following night, I just went straight to bed.
I literally just couldn't stay up.
And I think, I think that's the way I do it.
I just sleep.
So I don't have any special thing that I do.
I just go to sleep.
Liz asks, what are your favorite podcasts, True Crime and Other?
I've got so, so many and so many friends.
I don't want to leave anyone out.
So I'm just going to say the three main ones that inspired me to start my own
case file, They Walk Among Us and Fell In True Crime.
These are some of the podcasts that I, I never miss an episode of.
I love the, the one person narrative format with music.
There's a whole heap more that I love and I've introduced you to them in previous episodes.
Liz also asks, have we ever been on the same TTC streetcar?
She's talking about downtown Toronto.
The TTC is our transit.
Liz, probably not because I catch the go train to Union and then I walk up
from Union to King and Young.
So I have no real need to catch the streetcar.
Bobby, which case has affected you the most?
That would definitely have to be Tori Stafford.
Yeah, enough said about that one.
Cat, if you could torture and or punish one murderer, who would it be and why,
how would you remove them or punish them?
And she said, is that too dark?
I'm sure you want to remove someone.
Yeah, I mean, obviously everyone, but in particular,
Dylan Millard, I'm not going to say how I would punish them, but the guy just is just
a spoiled little rich kid who shows no regard for human life.
Just, oh, he's just horrendous.
And seeing him in the recent trial of Laura Babcock representing himself.
Oh, he's just like the worst guy.
Like I can't imagine being the mother of a guy like that.
And also Michael Rafferty, the guy who abducted and and murdered.
Well, we don't know if he murdered Tori Stafford.
I feel like Terri Lynn McClintock, she had a lot of a lot of issues from her childhood,
as you heard.
I feel like Michael Rafferty was the instigator of that crime and the pedophile.
So I have a lot of ill feelings towards him too.
Brie, are there any particular themes or topics you refuse to cover?
Yes, I've made a decision not to cover Luca Magnotta.
Just because he committed his crime specifically to try and get famous after several failed
attempts to get on a reality TV show.
So he's like, what's the most heinous and disgusting crime I can commit?
And then he filmed it.
And I feel like covering that crime would just give him even more publicity, which is what he wants.
Clifford Olson is the serial killer from BC.
I mentioned him a couple of times in the picked in episode.
He murdered children.
After Tori Stafford, I've just made a decision.
I have to distance myself from the cases involving children a little bit.
And for this reason, I said I was going to cover Derek Sureski in Alberta,
but I think I'm going to give myself a rest from that one too,
because there was a small child involved in that.
And I think I overdid it a bit with Tori Stafford.
So I'm going in the interest of self care, I'm going to lay off the child cases for the foreseeable future.
Liam asks, I love the way, the in depth way you detail the histories of all the important
people in these stories.
How do you go about your research process and how do you know when you have enough information?
God, that's a, that's a long winded question.
My research process is I usually spend the first four hours or so procrastinating
and stuffing around, not knowing where to start.
And then finally, I'm like, ah, and then I just decide to start somewhere.
Usually it's at the beginning of a book or I'll find a new site has covered an entire case
and they'll create like a link and include all of the articles under that case.
So I'll just start at the first article and then I'll do like an information dump where
I just put all the information into a document, scramble it all around and then rewrite the whole thing.
And then how do you know when you have enough information?
Well, it's usually when I get to the end of the book or I get to the most recent news article on the case.
I haven't gone wrong yet, I don't think.
I'm sure the listeners would have told me if I had.
Maggie says, why can't you tell me how to find information about Canadian true crime?
Maggie is one of my original listeners and they have become a very close friend,
but we have this in joke where they follow me around on social media and ask me where I,
where they can find information on Canadian true crime.
Maggie, I don't know how many times I've told you,
I am not the right person to speak to about Canadian true crime.
Please find somebody else.
Mike, what's the weirdest or most puzzling thing you've come across while doing all the research
for this podcast? I don't think there's really been anything weird or puzzling,
but one book that I used as a resource, I found quite a few mistakes in the book,
like it hadn't been proofread really well. There were some kind of plot holes I guess
and some date inconsistencies and it kind of stuffed me up a little bit.
I did not reference the book at the end, so you won't know which one I mentioned because I'm not
going to mention any books or recommend them to you unless I think they're really good.
This one was not a good book. Stephen, how do you find a work podcast family life balance?
Do you arrange time in a structured way or fit it in when you can?
Yeah, I have not come to a solution with that. Basically, as soon as the kids go to bed,
I'm on the computer and then I, that's usually about 8, 8.30 and then I write and research
until I can, until I have to go to bed, which is usually about 10.30. So yeah, I get like two,
two and a half hours a night and then if I'm honest, I probably spend the first half hour
stuffing around on Facebook. Yeah, I've got some work to do with that.
Alison, ever started a case and not finished it? Yes, I did. The case that was supposed to be Paula
Gallant was something else, another domestic homicide in Nova Scotia and I kind of did all
of the research for it and then realized I needed some more information on, on the victim because
the news articles didn't really flesh her out very well and I knew that her brother was in the,
in the news talking about raising awareness about domestic violence. So I tracked him down
and messaged him thinking surely he, you know, he might want to talk to me to raise awareness for
domestic violence because I was going to cover that whole angle, but evidently I, I caught him
at the wrong time and he, he, I don't think he was very pleased that I contacted him. So I was
really scared off about contacting the families of victims after that. I don't want to cause them
any undue pain or suffering. So yeah, I dropped that case and then found the Paula Gallant case
instead. Alison, would you ever do a case where there hasn't been a conviction? Not on my podcast,
I, I like to focus on solved cases because there are so many other quality podcasts that focus on
mysteries and unsolved cases, but I have done one case where there wasn't a conviction and that was
when I was guest host on the Insight podcast. I covered the disappearance of Madison Scott
in BC. So that was interesting and new for me because I had to go through theories and that
type of thing. That was, I don't want to say fun because it, you know, it's not a very nice subject
matter and she still hasn't been found, but that I enjoyed doing that with, with Allie from Insight.
Heather, in light of comments on another post, why don't you have TV? Well, I have our TV. I just
don't have the antenna to get free to air and we don't have cable. I've never had cable in my life.
So we have Netflix. That's it. And the last question is from Clay Anderson from Everything
But The Kitchen Sink podcast. Would you rather fight a hundred duck sized horses or one horse
sized duck, horse sized duck? I really don't like horses. So fighting a hundred tiny little horses
would not, would be really scary. So I'm going to choose one horse sized duck. So that is the end
of the questions. I think I've gone on for a bit longer than I thought I would. So if you're
sticking around, if you stuck around to the end, thank you so much. And stay tuned because I have
my three podcast promos from other new Canadian podcasts. And this time we've got one from Alberta,
one from Manitoba and one from Saskatchewan. So we've got the prairies covered this time.
Otherwise, I will see you on the next episode, which will be on the murder of Laura Babcock or the
next trial for Dylan Millard and Mark Smitch. Thank you all so much. Bye.
Hi, I'm Stephen and I'm Andrew. And we are the Real Canadian Podcast, the weekly show where
friends talk about current events and Canadian issues with a little bit of movies at the end.
And a couple beers. We're not pundits or reporters and we don't try to be. You want to
learn a little bit what's going on in the country while having a good time? You can find us on
Podbean, iTunes, Twitter, Google Play under the Real Canadian Podcast. Thanks to Christie for
including us. Hi, Canadian Hincher crime fans. I knew I'd find the cool people here.
I'm the crime liner from Whining About Crime. While I do enjoy a glass of wine while researching
two crime cases, I also like to whine about what I call the disconnect, the facts that make a case
more convoluted than it seems on the surface. You can find me on iTunes, Stitcher, and anywhere
else you listen to your podcasts. You'll know you've found me when you hear me say, please don't leave me.
Hello, I'm Lude Gallifrey. I'm Sage Murray. And I'm Leon Filger. And we are the Occulte Veritatus
Podcast. We talk about anything that intrigues, horrifies, or interests us, including true crime,
serial killers, military conspiracies, and other mysteries and horrors of reality.
So get cozy with your favorite alcoholic beverage, smoke a joint or two, only if it's
legally purchased medicinal marijuana, of course. And tune in. We would love to have you. You would.
You can find all of our links, all of the ways you can subscribe,
and the rest of our bullshit at www.ovpod.ca. We hope you listen in soon.